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Solidarity against online harassment

One of our colleagues has been the target of a sustained campaign of harassment for the past several months. We have decided to publish this statement to publicly declare our support for her, for every member of our organization, and for every member of our community who experiences this harassment. She is not alone and her experience has catalyzed us to action. This statement is a start.

The Tor Project works to create ways to bypass censorship and ensure anonymity on the Internet. Our software is used by journalists, human rights defenders, members of law enforcement, diplomatic officials, and many others. We do high-profile work, and over the past years, many of us have been the targets of online harassment. The current incidents come at a time when suspicion, slander, and threats are endemic to the online world. They create an environment where the malicious feel safe and the misguided feel justified in striking out online with a thousand blows. Under such attacks, many people have suffered — especially women who speak up online. Women who work on Tor are targeted, degraded, minimized and endure serious, frightening threats.

This is the status quo for a large part of the internet. We will not accept it.

We work on anonymity technology because we believe in empowering people. This empowerment is the beginning and a means, not the end of the discussion. Each person who has power to speak freely on the net also has the power to hurt and harm. Merely because one is free to say a thing does not mean that it should be tolerated or considered reasonable. Our commitment to building and promoting strong anonymity technology is absolute. We have decided that it is not enough for us to work to protect the world from snoops and censors; we must also stand up to protect one another from harassment.

It's true that we ourselves are far from perfect. Some of us have written thoughtless things about members of our own community, have judged prematurely, or conflated an idea we hated with the person holding it. Therefore, in categorically condemning the urge to harass, we mean categorically: we will neither tolerate it in others, nor will we accept it among ourselves. We are dedicated to both protecting our employees and colleagues from violence, and trying to foster more positive and mindful behavior online ourselves.

Further, we will no longer hold back out of fear or uncertainty from an opportunity to defend a member of our community online. We write tools to provide online freedom but we don't endorse online or offline abuse. Similarly, in the offline world, we support freedom of speech but we oppose the abuse and harassment of women and others. We know that online harassment is one small piece of the larger struggle that women, people of color, and others face against sexism, racism, homophobia and other bigotry.

This declaration is not the last word, but a beginning: We will not tolerate harassment of our people. We are working within our community to devise ways to concretely support people who suffer from online harassment; this statement is part of that discussion. We hope it will contribute to the larger public conversation about online harassment and we encourage other organizations to sign on to it or write one of their own.

As a gay man I've been there, gotten hurt, and lived to tell of it. However I will not stand in line to oppose it. We tend to overreact and merely create new victims. It is much harder to speak against overreacting than it is to line up and support an anti-harassment campaign (which in and of itself is not necessary a bad thing if it was purely speech).

Despite having lived through periods of severe harassment (and still to this day other forms of in-direct harassment by the media and the general public- in part due to intentionally malicious perceptions of what is, but is not, and political correctness) I'm more fearful of campaigns to end online harassment than I am of online harassment itself. You can avoid to some degree online harassment. You can't avoid the government putting you in handcuffs.

'Solidarity against online harassment' could mean anything and more often than not it means criminalizing speech. Laws that will be used to quell peoples opinions and hurt them- no victimize them. Governments and those in power lead in harassing behaviors. They target those who object, those who stand out, those who nobody cares about.

We need to think of the victims of the victims-the perpetrators. It might be a honorable effort to fight the harassment, but it will not be without the creation of new victims.

I could see how in some communities one might assume "solidarity against online harassment" would be code for criminalizing speech, but do you really think that is what the people on this list are talking about here? As one of them, I certainly don't.

This statement does have a fair amount of unspoken subtext. I think one purpose of it is to inform some people who are trying to drive a community apart with a gaslighting campaign that they've failed and we're standing together.

I hope that by taking leadership with this statement, the Tor Project will be able to participate in the anti-harassment discussion and maintain a stance against harassment that does not involve curtailing speech, but instead promotes and values respect.

I share your concerns that it is a hard position to take, but I think historically the Tor Project has shown that its involvements in these types of discussions - such as with domestic violence groups, law enforcement, legislators, etc - has yielded positive outcomes, where as withdrawing from those situations seems to cause spiraling misunderstandings and assumptions of bad faith.

I trust the Tor Project to try to do the right thing here, but like you, I hope they will be very careful about it, as they always are.

How exactly do you "stand up" to harassment? It's not stated and its not clear to me. While I doubt they're about to call for censorship it's not unheard of for people to contradict or say “that's not what I mean”. You can't say you support freedom of speech and than outlaw pornography- or the right of others to say mean things about you. I don't like the fact people have lied about me- but I still support the right of all people to speak freely.

Given that MOST people who have made these statements would sell out privacy and anonymity for the sake of perceiving additional security it would not be unsurprising to me if others took this statement to mean we should pass legislation that censors- and then they would say- but its not censorship because of x, y, and z. This type of speech is almost always alongside the views of people who would also propose terrible legislation that can / is being used to curtail speech.

Freedom of communications MUST come first at all costs.

Victim is a matter of perspective. We demonize people all the time who have done nothing but react in reasonable ways to unreasonable conditions that society has placed on them.

We're all both victims and perpetrators of taking more than what we can reasonably justify for example given the suffering of others around us (particularly on a world scale). We are selfish. We don't care about the people in prison because we ourselves are not in prison.

I do care, but I'm probably a lone exception. I'm not against reasonable action to protect others. However it can't come at the cost of censoring ANYTHING. That includes speech that some may find to be harassing.

I agree with some of your points, but I don't agree with your generalisations/characterisations, and your statement that 'freedom of communications MUST come first at all costs' is an endlessly-debated point and not an easy one for you to defend. More importantly, it's a point of view which is not reflected in most of the world's legal systems.

It should go without saying that the internet is not a country, and what happens on it doesn't happen in a law-free environment. Nor will it ever.

I'm not trying to be a dick here (as maybe I'm interpreting the whole thing weirdly), but when terms like:
"We will not accept it."
"... we must also stand up to protect one another from harassment."
"... we will neither tolerate [harassment] in others, nor will we accept it among ourselves."
"We will not tolerate harassment of our people."
... are used it sounds a little like a 'threatening' call to action.

What does "not tolerate" actually mean? That there'll be repercussions for those dishing out the harassment (i.e. harassing the harassers/shaming the shamers)? Or does it mean that "we'll write a list of people who don't support you harassing someone" - which is what it seems to be at the moment.

If the latter (which I think is actually a most appropriate and most kind gesture btw), then it's not so much a matter of "not tolerating" as it is "not supporting" (or conversely, supporting those being harassed).

Admittedly, I might be part of a very small minority that misinterpreted what was written as threatening ("If you harass someone, there will be repercussions!"). My grief comes from the use of the term "not tolerated" as it doesn't really state what this actually means.

This statement is meant as a gesture of support and, more, to raise awareness about the issue and try to get all of the neutral people in the middle to be mindful about it when choosing their behavior.

[Edit: after more thinking, I realize I am very wrong with accepting this alternate phrase and should correct myself. The problem with "not supported" is that it allows you to say "this is wrong; I will contribute to fixing it by not participating." And that's exactly the response that's gotten us to this point. Instead, we need to contribute to fixing it *by participating*. That's what this statement is all about (and why it keeps saying "this is a start".]

There's nothing wrong with anything you've said, Arma, it's just people trying to twist it out of shape.

Harassing people is illegal, not just immoral. Stopping harassment has nothing to do with interfering with 'free speech'. Free speech is not for the purpose of interfering with someone else going peacefully about her or his business. In law, and arguably in morals, the right to speak freely doesn't override the right to be unharassed.

Not harassing people is a basic principle of civilised society. We all benefit from having a civilised society, so we should all stand up for it. Elevating 'free speech' above other rights has never created a civilised society.

i agree nomatter what in life your going deal with idiots but the last thing this community needs is the government getting involved.The past has shown pretty much anything it touches goes to hell.Plus everyone is already losing rights and civil liberties so i think we are all being oppressed in some fashion(NSA)Its time we stand together or we will hang seperate.

I agree entirely. The "community" should strive to support each other, not blacklisting people they distagree with - for two reasons:

1: People who are being harassed usually, and in my experience, need strong friends to show support more than an echo chamber that refuses to recognize individuals

2: These movements creates a theoretical group of people that doesn't exist who are being harassed by another theoretical group of people that doesn't exist. Because of this, these movements ends up neglecting and shunning actual inidividuals who are actually being abused and harassed, especially when the individual's experience does not align with the goals of the movement.

I think the Tor Project should be encouraging people to work together to support each other and stop specific harassers, not starting an anti-bully movement.

It should go without saying that I would support the investigation of serious death threats. In many cases though the serious threats need to be separated from off-the-cuff comments on random message boards.

I of course support your colleague but in my humble opinion next time you identify an harasser, contact him, warn him and ask for an apologize privately first. And if he doesn't stop then you can out him in public.
I'm not crying over the idiot who got what he deserves but I just think it's good compromise between protecting privacy and preventing abuses.

Actually, we're explicitly not calling out specific harassers here. We're calling out the harassment as a whole, as a part of a much bigger problem in our Internet community and in our culture.

It's time for the broader Internet community (and heck, beyond even the Internet) to recognize the abuse and harassment that women in technology experience, and we all need to step up and make sure this sort of abuse stops because our world is poorer when we lose diversity.

Actually you specifically called out harassment against women, gay people and minorities. Even leaving aside the issue of only deeming certain groups as being worthy of protection, you haven't defined harassment. It's an impossibly broad term which is used as a call to action for all kinds of measures.

It's not about "only deeming certain groups as being worthy of protection", but that those other groups are already protected. In case you still don't understand this, ponder on why nobody protests for the birds' right to fly.

Straight white men are already protected by the law, and in fact are actively enshrining their right to discriminate into law as we speak (e.g, new "conscience clause" laws permitting denying medical treatment to LGBT people.) They are not under threat. They just see any slight reduction in their dominance as a threat.

The statement goes beyond categories. The whole passage is very clear that it's harassment which is the issue, not the 'category' of the person who is the target of the harassment nor the 'category' of the person doing the harassing.

On your other point, there is no need for the staff here to define harassment because the law already defines it.

Hoo boy. I was with you until the part at the end when you say "the law". There sure are a lot of laws out there, in a variety of jurisdictions, and some of them aren't so great. So I am not eager to rely on what "the law" says when making judgements about how I think the world should be.

Harassment is a social issue, and for online harassment, we the Internet community need to (be the ones to) solve it.

I've sat around a lot of tables and IRC rooms talking about people in
our communities getting harassed and how we can do something about it.

I'm still not sure how, but I think solidarity is a good start. And if
anyone can figure out a solution for this huge and debilitating problem,
I do think the people who participate in the Tor project are capable of
attacking it. Without stiffling speech and without creating new victims. I support anonimity and privacy, and I also support efforts to combat harassment.

Not speaking up against harassment is the privilege of those who have never been targets.

Thank you for giving new support to people who have been silenced, driven from their homes, or made chronically heartsick by rape and death threats; paralyzed, undermined, or destabilized by gas-lighting; discouraged, isolated, or persecuted by wrongful accusations.

Thank you for doing this. Thinking about how we can all do better, this sentiment resonates with me:

"It's true that we ourselves are far from perfect. Some of us have written thoughtless things about members of our own community, have judged prematurely, or conflated an idea we hated with the person holding it. Therefore, in categorically condemning the urge to harass, we mean categorically: we will neither tolerate it in others, nor will we accept it among ourselves."

I have not experienced it in the Tor community, but I sincerely hope that the (open source) mindset that seems to reward individuals for shaming those folks that are less knowledgeable yet care enough to speak up and engage, is a thing of the past.

I regret that the actions of these individuals have come this far, in both having seen some of the specific issue in question, as well having a modicum of awareness of the problems that our colleagues encounter on a daily basis.

If a community is going to be subject to harassment, there is a responsibility of members to support each other and a need to assert a vision of what the community's expectations are. There are certainly people who might not always have had positive influences in their lives displaying a standard what is decent behavior. Tor has a leadership role in the community, people look up to the project and personalities involved. I appreciate that it is exercising its position in a constructive manner.

This is also a moment of reflection for even those who aren't necessarily intolerant to examine their own behavior. I have seen decent people resort to less decent practices in their communications with other members of the community. We could all do well to check ourselves. I view my participation as a commitment for self-examination as much as it is a rejection of another group's nonsense.

Furthermore, when Tor is at times misused by malicious parties for abusive behavior elsewhere, this reaffirms that support for freedom expression does not mean support for violence against others.

I hope this is a first step in a continuing engagement on harassment for Tor and all the signatories of this letter.

In Western countries, Feminism is no longer a movement that struggles for equal rights. Instead, it has become synonymous with misandry and other kinds of hate-mongering.

21st century Feminists are among the most intolerant, hypocritical bullies on the internet. Their complaints about "online harassment" are really nothing but calls for censorship against those who stand up for tolerance and reason against their offensive vitriol.

Women who do care for equal rights are women who oppose feminism and who condemn this biased article as a perfect example of Feminist irony and hypocrisy.

The fact that you read this post - which describes a general effort to stand in solidarity against online harassment (most commonly aimed at minorities and women) and nowhere uses the term "feminism" - and thought, "Grrr! Those damn feminists are ruining all the things again!" says a lot about both feminism and your objection to it.

Actually, it mostly says just two things::
1. feminism is intersectional support of different oppressed groups of people, and plans to remedy that oppression
2. you are so not okay with that

The fact that you read this post, and did not read half a centimeter above it to see the aformentioned tags, and then immediately thought "grrr, those damn anti-feminists will find any excuse to hate women", says a lot about your views on anyone who dislikes (western, 3rd-wave) feminism.

Recent Updates

There's a new alpha release available for download. If you build Tor from source, you can download the source code for 0.4.0.1-alpha from the usual place on the website. Packages should be available over the coming weeks, with a new alpha Tor Browser release likely by the end of the month.

Remember, this is an alpha release: you should only run this if you'd like to find and report more bugs than usual.

Tor 0.4.0.1-alpha is the first release in the new 0.4.0.x series. It introduces improved features for power and bandwidth conservation, more accurate reporting of bootstrap progress for user interfaces, and an experimental backend for an exciting new adaptive padding feature. There is also the usual assortment of bugfixes and minor features, all described below.

Changes in version 0.4.0.1-alpha - 2019-01-18

Major features (battery management, client, dormant mode):

When Tor is running as a client, and it is unused for a long time, it can now enter a "dormant" state. When Tor is dormant, it avoids network and CPU activity until it is reawoken either by a user request or by a controller command. For more information, see the configuration options starting with "Dormant". Implements tickets 2149 and 28335.

The client's memory of whether it is "dormant", and how long it has spent idle, persists across invocations. Implements ticket 28624.

There is a DormantOnFirstStartup option that integrators can use if they expect that in many cases, Tor will be installed but not used.

Major features (bootstrap reporting):

When reporting bootstrap progress, report the first connection uniformly, regardless of whether it's a connection for building application circuits. This allows finer-grained reporting of early progress than previously possible, with the improvements of ticket 27169. Closes tickets 27167 and 27103. Addresses ticket 27308.

When reporting bootstrap progress, treat connecting to a proxy or pluggable transport as separate from having successfully used that proxy or pluggable transport to connect to a relay. Closes tickets 27100 and 28884.

Tor 0.3.5.7 is the first stable release in its series; it includes compilation and portability fixes, and a fix for a severe problem affecting directory caches. Tor 0.3.4.10 and 0.3.3.11 are also released today; please see the official announcements for those releases if you are tracking older stable versions.

The Tor 0.3.5 series includes several new features and performance improvements, including client authorization for v3 onion services, cleanups to bootstrap reporting, support for improved bandwidth- measurement tools, experimental support for NSS in place of OpenSSL, and much more. It also begins a full reorganization of Tor's code layout, for improved modularity and maintainability in the future. Finally, there is the usual set of performance improvements and bugfixes that we try to do in every release series.

There are a couple of changes in the 0.3.5 that may affect compatibility. First, the default version for newly created onion services is now v3. Use the HiddenServiceVersion option if you want to override this. Second, some log messages related to bootstrapping have changed; if you use stem, you may need to update to the latest version so it will recognize them.

We have designated 0.3.5 as a "long-term support" (LTS) series: we will continue to patch major bugs in typical configurations of 0.3.5 until at least 1 Feb 2022. (We do not plan to provide long-term support for embedding, Rust support, NSS support, running a directory authority, or unsupported platforms. For these, you will need to stick with the latest stable release.)

Below are the changes since 0.3.5.6-rc. For a complete list of changes since 0.3.4.9, see the ReleaseNotes file.

Changes in version 0.3.5.7 - 2019-01-07

Major bugfixes (relay, directory):

Always reactivate linked connections in the main loop so long as any linked connection has been active. Previously, connections serving directory information wouldn't get reactivated after the first chunk of data was sent (usually 32KB), which would prevent clients from bootstrapping. Fixes bug 28912; bugfix on 0.3.4.1-alpha. Patch by "cypherpunks3".